Chapter 15: Pressing Matters
"I wish you'd said something sooner," Roxy wiped her eyes, looking away as she straightened her bloodied clothes to recompose herself.
"We can hunt that down and wrap this up so we can get back to more pressing matters," Gunner suggested with a playful press of his hips against hers, his meaning clear. Roxy took a deep breath and regretfully stepped back. She was severely tempted but the demon was coalescing nearby. It was still too early for a ritual involving the blood moon, she wondered what its intention was without its host.
"Gunner, how many of your abilities transferred?" Roxy gently squeezed Gunner's hand as she reached out with her magical senses for the source of the roar. The scent of her signature drifted on the breeze, mingling with the hickory smoke of Gunner's.
"Enough. Bantu wasn't sure when they'd manifest," Gunner followed Roxy's gaze, searching the shadows between the trunks in the tree line. "You've been frying the power grid. Are you going to have enough juice to fight this thing?"
Roxy felt a pull about 200 yards to their left, further into the hospital campus in one of the patient gardens. "I found it, let's go." She pointed and pursed her lips. It was dangerous to keep fighting at the hospital. "In the western garden. There's an electric car charging station nearby that feels like its on another transformer." She smiled up at him. "I can use our phones if I get really desperate."
"Guess it's a good thing we charged them in the car," Gunner scooped Roxy up into his arms. Roxy started to protest but Gunner shook his head. "No, it'll be faster if I just carried you. I recover quicker, you just focus on gathering mana and I'll get you there."
Roxy felt a the coiling of energy beneath her as Gunner's posture shifted and he ran forward with unnatural speed. Mannu's magical abilities had always been enhancements to his natural talents. She wondered how long it took for him to get his new body to this physique that could handle the strain of enhancement magic. It was why martial magic users like Mannu trained so intensely throughout their lifetimes, sudden strength and speed came at a cost — if they hadn't been conditioned properly, the muscles and ligaments would tear under the sudden strain. In a way, it was also a bit unfair, where Roxy had to gather mana from outside sources, Gunner's came from a high metabolism and caloric intake.
Roxy witnessed the world pass by in a blur. It dawned on her that perhaps the scent of cloves wasn't just a coincidence. If Mannu was here in Gunner's body, did that mean Bantu had transmigrated over too? "Is Bantu here?" She asked over the whistling of the wind.
"I'm not sure. I think I sense him at times but others, he's gone. He said if he made it over, he'd figure out a way to open a gate back for us... but it's been years," Gunner replied as he rounded a corner, navigating through the red illumination of the hospital grounds, leaping over low retaining walls.
Roxy sensed a heartbeat within the dark energy that grew louder as they approached. She pulled mana from the air, quickly gathering motes of power from the surrounding power sources. "It's almost done."
Gunner slid to a stop inside a courtyard full of Chrysanthemums and decorative grass. Moonlight spilled down between dark storm clouds, illuminating a purple orb hovering over a fountain in the center of the garden. Muted alarms blared inside the hospital as their breathing was drowned out by the booming staccato of the orb's heartbeat. His jaw tightened as he set Roxy on the cobblestone path beside him. The air rippled as energy exploded toward them.
Roxy called up a shield spell, crossing her forearms in front of her as the clang of steel on claw tore the air. Gunner and the demon clashed in a flurry of movement that she had trouble tracking with her eyes. When the opponents broke apart, she saw the tension in the now exposed muscles of Gunner's back, his shirt torn by monstrous claws as he glared into the toothy maw of a bear skull of putrid flesh atop a thick, hairless body of charred, rotting flesh.
"It's here." The inhuman strangled voice hissed. "It's here! Yesss." A bony paw pointed at Roxy with a rasp of laughter. "Perfect, perfect, perfect! Useless meat gone. Free to take."
Gunner lunged forward with a powerful swing of his blade, cutting into the bulk of the demon as it parried the blow. Its beady eyes glowed with sickly embers as it chomped down on Gunner's shoulder. Gunner slammed his sword's pommel into the demon's skull, grunting from pain. "Shut up!"
Roxy watched in horror as blood ran down Gunner's back. What had it meant? She knew what she needed to do, Gunner was trying to buy her time. If she didn't hurry, the demon would spread its tendrils out and infect the wounded inside the hospital wards. It'd be like what happened at the start of their journey in Alpeach all over again without Bantu to help them slow its influence. She scanned the area for the demonic power source, the orb hadn't settled inside of the demon so much as it had used the physical form as a distraction.
Mana coiled around her arms in pulsating currents of electricity, waiting for her to unleash it. She felt a tremor beneath her feet, her eyes widened as a giant pair of milky eyes stared up at her from her shadow. Cold fear made her hair stand on end as the face started to form, a pair of sneering lips leered up at her.
Gunner was too embroiled in his fight with the undead demonic bear to help Roxy deal with the controlling presence forcing itself through the shield barrier beneath her feet. She knew what the foul thing intended to do if it broke through, malicious lustful hunger gleaming in its fixed gaze.
"No!" Roxy shouted as the edges of her shield cracked like glass.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone